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More Points for User Reviews

I agree. Perhaps there could be a voting system based on how good or how bad someone's review is. When enough votes are made over a certain period of time, that would determine how many points the reviewer would receive. It would not only promote high quality reviews, but would also make the reviews much more interactive.

The biggest issue with that is that you'd have to ensure and enforce objectivity in both the reviews and the users given power to vote. Voting is something that both Digg and Newsvine have implemented. On Digg the voting system is used a popularity, or if something was funny. The same for Newsvine. If a comment or article gets voted up it indicates who much people liked it or agreed with it - not if it was objective, factual, or how well it covered the title - which is what you're saying should be done. You'll never give people the power to vote and have them make informed choices with that power, they see it as a way to popularize something.So in the beginning it might promote high quality reviews but as the flood gates open and new users come aborad, it would degrade to "how cool" something was.

I think that a well written review would can take a long time it's not like something like a comment which is just basically what you're thinking at the time. Though if you think about it ask yourselves why am i wrighting the review? You can't really count play time as a factor because you would play the game anyway.

Though there shouldn't be a voting system because some very good reveiews don't get looked at at all (just like blog posts). So, should we discriminate against people and not give them the points they deserve because their reveiw doesn't get looked at by enough people for the points they deserve?

Until I discovered why. A simple "10/10 This game is kewl!" or "0/10 This game is lame!" can qualify as a user review. So while myself and plenty of other members are putting forth effort in writing actual reviews for the user review section, they're being offset and almost diminished by swarms of "User Reviews" that are just brief comments.

There needs to be some sort of system that can quantify what is or isn't a review, awarding extra points to those that actually are reviews as opposed to "i like this game".

Simple - don't allow users to post reviews until they're level 13. Yeah, it blows, but show me someone over level 12 that writes more quantitative than qualitative. What this will allow is those comment reviews to become forum posts or blogs and not dilute the established system. Besides, it will give an impression that a more experienced user is behind the wheel instead of some drive-by-commenter. It might have a few negative implications, this plan - but I think in the long run it's a win win for the community.

I think blogs should be worth more, but user reviews are too short to be worth ten points. Most people just put down a sentence or two and all they say is "this is the greatest game of all time!"

Yes. Blog should be worth more, but if you really go looking at a lot of blogs they're seldom very substantive. That's a problem that has plagued nearly every community based site allowing user generated content. People have a hard time figuring out what is twitter and what isn't - harder still, figuring out that even browsers have spell check built in them today.In contrast, it's difficult to read a crowd. Many of my blogs are met with "tl;dr" because I'm verbose and exploratory in my writing. Other times, people write blogs that are little more than a list (which is great for readership and flame wars), or will simply use their blog as a notepad and extended personal update.

In context to reviews, there's no "real" solution other than to not pay attention to the people. You can even go on Amazon or GameStop and see three word reviews that have no value or substance. I think the general idea though, is that in quantity when enough people say "teh game iz WIN!!!1111" then the public mindset is that X number of people cannot possibly be wrong. Still, it doesn't answer the burning question as to "why" the game is good - especially for people with more than a handful of braincells.

Currently, I think the best solution is to give users select post taxonomies and categories, things would go much smoother. For example, I generally write my user reviews as a blog. If I could, from my blog, apply a "review" category with seperate taxonomies like "XBOX", "PS3", etc., rather than SEO tag and meta keyword tag things to hell, then the site could take all blog labeled as "reviews" with sub categories into system, and game title - and display them on command for user searching for user reviews. It would force users to put a bit more effort in the review by way of the need to state the game, console, etc on their own and not just ride the tail of a staff review. It's actually not too complicated a process... It's easily done in WordPress, but this site isn't WP based - its identifiably Telligent and though it behaves very similarly in most cases, would require more back end reconfiguration from the tech staff within GIO.

There's a solution to the problem, but it is less about willingness and more about effectiveness and practicality.

Personally I still don't see the importance of points within the community. The frequency of your blogs being read or reviews has nothing to do with your power level, any community attention comes from attention to detail and honed writing. While I two see the reason why reviews could be given more points than regular comments, why should they be more than a blog post if we are to assume that each are done with the same amount of care?

I totally agree. User reviews can be quite long and very thoughtfully written (no pointing to myself, *wink*) and five points is unfairly low for what can be helpful in determining game purchases. Fifteen points for walkthroughs is also too low, in my opinion.

Well, given certain problems - most of the guides that get posted on the sites by users are crap, and now a lot of them spam - I'd say 15 is a fair amount, especially in terms of preventing users from point-boosting. I still support more points for user reviews, but many of those aren't very good quality either. I've literally seen people only post reviews to comment on reviews they've seen or "preview" games or review them based on the demos than the actual game.

It's still a tantalizing thought, considering how long and detailed certain reviews can be... *thinks of my Bioshock Infinite, XCOM, and ME3 reviews*